Dialogue: Privacy? Our MPs can't tell a secret

By GARTH GEORGE

You have to wonder at the intelligence of politicians, although I suppose mentioning "intelligence" and "politicians" in one sentence is a contradiction in terms.

But when they start telling you in effect that black is white, night is day and east is west, then things must be getting as bad as George Orwell reckoned they would.

The latest example of back-to-front, upside-down thinking is the parliamentary select committee which decided that allowing the police and the security services to hack into our computer files and e-mails is not an attack on privacy.

After hearing objections to amendments to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) from internet users, IT entrepreneurs, the Green Party and even the Privacy Commissioner, the committee ruled: "We consider that overall the [law change] will strengthen privacy protection and does not significantly increase the powers of the state to intrude on individual privacy."

Now how can that be? What we have here is the Government making computer hacking illegal, but exempting the police, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau and giving them the right to hack into our personal and, I presume, business computers and to search millions of messages and files - without our consent.

Said the committee: "These exemptions relate either to existing powers or to activities that these agencies could presently undertake without specific authorisation [my italics]. The exemptions are also placed on a clear statutory footing and are supported with appropriate safeguards."

But there is not a word about what this "statutory footing" is or what the so-called "safeguards" are.

As Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane said, these law changes authorise browsing through personal information on an unprecedented scale.

How right he is. If the police or anyone else want to search my house, intercept my conventional mail or tap my phone, they have first get a court order. But the potential for abuse by some bored Mr Plods or spooks to amuse themselves by browsing through electronic communications and files is not just alarming. It is, as Green MP Keith Locke says, "very dangerous".

"The potential for fishing expeditions is quite dramatic," he said. "Keyword searches can be used and there is the potential for huge invasions of privacy involved in remote access to people's computers."

But the committee, stolidly continuing to look down the wrong end of the telescope, said it had considered concerns but " ... we consider that the safeguards ... are adequate to ensure that personal privacy is balanced appropriately with the rights of the state to protect its citizens."

Now there's a laugh. The state has been reneging on its "right" to protect its citizens for a decade or more, and has never been as remiss as it is now.

Protecting citizens means upholding morals, ethics and values so that family and community life is strong, providing proper health services to all those who need them, ensuring that the poor and disadvantaged are adequately provided for, and making sure that life-preparing education is available to every child.

It also means having a well-staffed, well-paid and well-equipped police force with high standards and good morale, making sure that the law is enforced, irrespective of how unpopular it might be to some minorities and, last but by no means least, providing the nation with adequate armed forces - land, sea and air - for defence of the realm.

Against those deficiencies, electronic spying on citizens just doesn't rate.

Yet as far as I'm concerned, the police and the intelligence services (now there's a misnomer, if there ever was one) can hack into my computer any time they like - and bore themselves silly in the process.

Because if I wanted to communicate to anyone something that I didn't want anyone else to know, the last thing I'd use would be my computer.

This latest invasion of personal privacy, which is every individual's right in a democracy, just provides further evidence that the Privacy Act as it stands isn't worth the paper it is written on.

It has - as I predicted it would at the time it was passed - quite the opposite effect, for it is used by politicians, public servants, professionals (including jurists), businessmen and all manner of others with something to hide as a secrecy act, a means of keeping hidden a whole lot of things they don't want us to know.

I remember laughing like a drain back in 1984 - before the internet was what it is today - at story after story crowing that George Orwell's scenarios in his novel 1984 hadn't come true.

I knew then, as I know now, that he should have called it "2004".

* garth_george@herald.co.nz